


like real people do

by Salty_Cro



Series: worshiping a god only i can see [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, Song: Like Real People Do (Hozier), Songfic, The Adventure Zone: Amnesty (Podcast) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 14:41:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18153203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salty_Cro/pseuds/Salty_Cro
Summary: You don't know everything about the not-quite-man in your home, but you'll know when it's time.





	like real people do

**Author's Note:**

> another hozier songfic! this one is decidedly less horny. also, duck's speech and thought patterns don't translate the same way that indrid's do to the lyric style, but i think it works.

“I wondered,” you say. You’re a simple man, you don’t wonder much. But something about the man in your home is so evocative, strikes such a chord with you, that you can’t help but want to know more. He looks at you, and he’s scared. You take his hand in both of yours, like a promise to give twice as much as he is willing to take. You take a shaky breath and finish, “I wondered about where you went, what you did, the night after the tree.”

 

“What do you mean?” Indrid replies. He is looking past you, away from your joined hands. You can both picture the scene: him in his Sylph form, dirt and snow sticking to him, he was leaning on your shoulders and you told him to leave.

 

“Why did you come back?” you ask softly. You hope he has an answer, but he doesn’t always. That’s part of why you’re falling in love with him.

 

“I… I don’t know,” he says. And that’s fine. You don’t need to mention the churned earth around his Winnebago, like he kept taking off and landing again. Or the notebook, mostly covered in dirt, just barely unearthed above the shoreline of the river. Or that you recognized his handwriting in it immediately.

 

“Why did you save me?” you ask. It’s a bit complicated, this question, because he’s already told you, and you can put two and two together yourself just fine. He came back because he saw you die and he couldn’t live with that. But hearing him say it is so nice, and you’ve felt alone for a long time.

 

“Doesn’t that answer your first question too?” he deflects.

 

“You know what I’m asking,” you say.

 

“I couldn’t let you go,” he says. And while he still isn’t looking at you, his hand tightens around yours.

 

“It was kinda nice, you know,” you suggest, and he knows what you mean. The hand you aren’t holding takes off his glasses, and carefully (he’s always so careful around you) he envelops you with his whole self. It’s like that night, when he ripped you off the road and flew off into the trees, but this time you’re not losing your goddamn mind. Well, maybe a little bit.

 

You won’t ask him where he came from. You won’t ask how long he spent looking at your futures, at your present, at your past. And he won’t ask how long you spent worrying about him, about the nights you looked out your window just a little too much, as if he might be waiting just past your sight. A lot of your relationship with him is “don’t ask, don’t tell” and yet you know more about him than you ever thought possible.

 

Instead, you press your lips to the side of his fuzzy head, and he brushes his proboscis against your cheek. You laugh a little bit, from the tickling sensation and from the absurdity of it all.

 

“Will we ever kiss like real people?” you ask.

 

He just laughs and tucks his head against your shoulder, keeping his mandibles away from your soft neck. He could destroy you in an instant, but the knowledge that he won’t lights you up inside like a thousand misplaced fireworks.

 

Sometimes he gets a look in his eyes, like he is looking for something that isn’t there. It’s a feeling you know well, but you’ve never found a remedy. You just guide him to the couch, where he sits down complacently. He’ll do anything you tell him to, and it’s a strange power to hold over someone. To be fair, you’ll believe anything he tells you. It’s a different kind of power, but again, he won’t use it against you. 

 

You go to the kitchen to make him food; it’s the only comfort you know won’t hurt him. He doesn’t feel safe in your arms, as hard as you try. No sword or strength or security can protect him from himself, and it’s not your battle to fight anyway. You remember a time you avoided battles.

 

When you look up to keep an eye on him, he’s sitting on the window bench, looking out at the town. His shoulders are slumped with sadness and the terrible, crushing weight that he is always carrying. You have offered to help him bear it. He says you are already carrying enough.

 

So instead of asking, you walk over to him with the hot cocoa and sit across from him. He holds the warmth in his hands but says nothing. Asks nothing. It’s silent, looking through the cold window and seeing the town you know so well in a light that isn’t so new at this point. After all, the strangest change is sitting here next to you.

 

You’re barely touching him, just a brush of legs too long for such a small windowsill, and then the hot cocoa disappears and he is in your arms. He physically cannot cry, he’s told you this before, but this is the closest thing you’ve seen to it. You hold him close, try to hold him in the way he holds you that makes you feel like the only thing in the world. He is the only thing in your world right now, and he needs to know it. He melts under your hands, still shaking with sorrow, until he calms down and a soft sigh escapes him.

 

He’s been around enough nights that you know when he’s fallen asleep. He weighs nothing as you carry him to your bed. If he were awake, he would make some joke about a monster in your bed. He makes the same joke every time, like a last chance for you to let go. If life weren’t so hard, you would never let go.

 

Even in the soft moonlight, with his back against your chest, you can’t fall asleep. You run your hands through his tangled silver hair. He doesn’t wake up. You hide your face in his neck, and he doesn’t wake up. You are scared to talk, scared to ask, what has scared him so thoroughly that he cried in the arms of a man he claimed he barely knew.

 

He does wake up eventually, when the moon is too high to peer through the curtains. He sighs deeply, and shuffles around until he’s facing you. With tentative hands and a more tentative mouth, he kisses you. You are ready, you’ve been ready, since the night he sat outside your door waiting for you to come home. 

 

You never ask him why he does things, he never asks the same to you. Right now it’s just his lips pressed up against your lips. Maybe you can kiss like real people do.

**Author's Note:**

> im thinking of making this into a semi-coherent series of songfics, but idk if i should just stick to hozier or add other songs or even just leave it at this. let me know!


End file.
